


A Beautiful Lie

by DemonDeepFried



Series: Song-Fics [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Babies, Domestic Avengers, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Pietro Becomes a Dad, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Pregnancy, Pregnant, Pregnant Reader, Reader Pregnant, Reader-Insert, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:38:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4234158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonDeepFried/pseuds/DemonDeepFried
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SONG-FIC ('A Beautiful Lie'- 30 Seconds to Mars)- You found out that you were pregnant just over two months ago and now you had approached and passed your first trimester. Thing is? You still haven’t told Pietro. Not even when he’s the father. Sometimes its like living an entire lie and you wish you could find the courage to tell him. But the closer you get to telling him, the closer he gets to finding out by himself.<br/>But which will happen first?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beautiful Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah so this is a song-fic and the song is 'A Beautiful Lie' by 30 Seconds to Mars. There is some post-trauma in this but its fairly minor and nothing really needs a trigger warning; lots of angst, however, with people being stupid (as usual when two people love each other.) But then there's a happy ending :)  
> Enjoy and please comment! :)xx

“Are you alright, Y/N?” Steve asked you, concerned when you stumbled into the kitchen flushed and nauseated. “You don’t look all that great.”

At his comment, Pietro looked up and frowned.

“I’m fine,” you answered, soothing the both of them down. There was no way you were going to tell them that you’d finally stopped throwing up with your morning sickness. Urgh, you felt like shit. ‘Glowing pregnancy’ looked a lot easier in the movies.

Unconvinced, you felt a brief breeze before Pietro was by your side and placing the back of his hand against your forehead. “Are you sure?” he asked in his thick accent, “You do look a little flushed.”

Brushing him off and pulling a packet of Monster Munch from the cupboard- then rethinking it and taking two- you trudged wearily into the lounge area and settled on the sofa to munch on them, telling him, “Yes, I’m sure. Its a– it’s a girl thing.”

_Well, it wasn’t an outright lie._

* * *

While you lay in bed that night, drifting in and out of consciousness as you tossed and turned, you thought over the lie you were living and covered your face with your palms and rolled over to hide your face in your pillow. Despite the fact that you had been dating Pietro Maximoff for about six months, you still didn’t often share a room- only on the more ‘eventful’ nights- but that was primarily to do with the fact that you needed space.

He understood.

They all did.

Ever since you had been rescued from a private industry that predominantly focussed its resources on human (or however loosely you used the term when it was actually done on people who had inhuman abilities) experimentation. You had been kept at the labs for a little over five years, kept alive solely because your powers were among the most extraordinary the insane scientists had ever witnessed.

**_Lie awake in bed at night_  
** And think about your life  
Do you want to be different?  
Try to let go of the truth  
The battles of your youth  
‘Cause this is just a game 

Exposed to some of the more deadly experiments and DNA extractions, because your healing abilities allowed you to heal yourself in minutes, you had been just the empty, broken shell of the person you once were when the Avengers had found you. It was Quicksilver who had broken you out and you knew you were in love with him even then.

But one thing you never did tell the Avengers, or in fact anyone, was that while you had been kept there you had been impregnated for another one of the Doctor Rawe’s experiments. 

He’d wanted to see if you would ‘produce mutated offspring.’

After an agonising nine months, the baby was taking immediately from you and you were left to collect the remnants of your shattered soul from where it had been crushed to the floor when they had snatched your child from your grasp.

You never did see your baby again.

You didn’t even know whether it had been a son or a daughter.

All you knew was that Dr Rawe had been particularly sour that following week and the child was never spoken of again.

That was precisely the reason why you hadn’t told Pietro, nay anyone, that you were four months pregnant with his child. Even though you trusted them all entirely, you couldn’t go through that pain again. You couldn’t let your baby out of your sight.

When it was born, you would leave.

It was already decided.

 __ **It’s a beautiful lie  
** It’s the perfect denial  
Such a beautiful lie to believe in  
So beautiful, beautiful it makes me 

* * *

You woke up, almost another month later and followed the same usual routine of dressing into loose sweats with a hoodie of your boyfriend’s that was two sizes too large for you and covered the now indiscreet mound of your tummy. In fact, it actually seemed larger than you remembered and you were doubly tired and worn out.

Since you’d discovered that you were pregnant, you had visited the doctor in town frequently (though you knew SHIELD would be so much better at coping to your needs, you just couldn’t be in a lab like that again and so  _similarly_ vulnerable.) They weren’t good but they informed you that both heartbeats- yours and the baby’s, you assumed- were normal and everything was going as it should.

The extra crappy you felt, you put down to this being your second pregnancy. That made sense, right? Professor Google seemed to think so. It was just annoying that your bump was getting more and more difficult to cover up and you’d taken to openly announcing how many meals you were eating to try and offer some sort of indirect excuse- not that it seemed anyone was buying it, especially since your craving seemed to be only for carrots and pot noodles, and nobody had been able to get you to eat anything else.

Slumping down into one of the sofas in the lounge, you snuggled up into a pillow and before you knew it, you were asleep again listening to the droning voices of Tony and Steve arguing in the kitchen.

oOo

_“Yeah, she-err, she’s been off-colour for a while now, actually.”  
_

_“I see, and you didn’t ask her if anything was wrong at all?”  
_

_“Well of course! But she- I mean, it’s Y/N. I love her more than my own life but she can be so damn stubborn some times.”  
_

_“Yes, I had become aware of that.”_

Blinking your eyes blearily, you focussed your gaze on the two men stood above you. When your vision finally cleared, you saw that it was Pietro and Banner.

Looking around your surroundings, you yelped and crawled as far up the hospital bed as you could when you recognised it as the tower's lab.

Pietro made a move as to grab your arms, but remembered your nervousness around forceful contact and backed off, keeping his voice low and soothing as he explained, “Y/N, I’m sorry but we brought you up here when you started burning up.”

Looking to Dr Banner for something of an explanation, he shuffled awkwardly before saying, “Well, I took some tests and it seems like it was just a bit of heart burn.”

“That doesn’t sound like nothing!” Pietro snapped.

Banner chewed on his lip before shooting you a glance and mumbling, “Well, it is for someone in her…condition.”

Your breathing stopped. 

And, no, not just because the baby was pressing against your internal organs.

“W-what do you mean?” your - _oh, so innocent_ \- other half frowned, looking suspiciously between the two of you. “Her condition?”

Averting your gaze, you stared pointedly at the ground.

“Y/N?” he asked quietly, his hand slipping into yours and squeezing gently. “What’s going on? Please, just-just talk to me…”

Inhaling shakily, you breathed out- in a voice quieter than his own-, “I’m pregnant.”

**_It’s time to forget about the past_  
** To wash away what happened last  
Hide behind an empty face  
Don’t ask too much, just say  
‘Cause this is just a game 

* * *

“HOW THE  _FUCK_  COULD YOU NOT TELL ME SOMETHING AS BIG AS THIS?!” Pietro shouted, slamming doors in the kitchen where the two of you confronted each other. 

“BECAUSE THIS IS ABOUT  _ME_ , TOO!” you yelled back. “DO YOU THINK THIS IS EASY FOR ME?!”

“Well it would be damn sight easier if you’d just told me in the first place and we could work through this,  _together_!” he snapped, spinning around to fix you with a glare, though his eyes were shining and his voice was becoming husky. You felt your bottom lip wobble at that and inwardly cursed your disrupted hormones. “I just don’t understand…why didn’t you just tell me?” He sounded so betrayed and broken and all you wanted to do was wrap him up in your arms and cry in a helpless huddle on the floor.

“I…” you tried, your voice breaking on the first syllable. “It’s not my first,” you said in a voice as quiet as the brush of a moth’s wing.

The mutant froze.

“What?”

Avoiding his icy blue eyes, you fell into a chair at the table and picked your juice carton back up again. “It’s not my first,” you mumbled again. “At the-the lab, Dr Rawe, he-he…he wanted to see what would happen.”

Pietro looked aghast and for the first time in his life, completely motionless.

“He-he…” the former spluttered, “he  _what_?!”

“I never did see it,” you whispered, staring intently at the label on the juice carton and picking at it with bitten fingernails. “The baby, they took it away from me right after I gave birth and since…well, when I found out I was…again…then– I just, I freaked out. I couldn’t go through that again…”

“Y/N,” he told you, speeding over and taking your hands tightly in his, “Why would you ever think it would be like that?”

Snatching your hands away from him, you snapped, “Because what was the first thing that happened to me when I got here?! They took me down to the labs and they  _experimented_ on me! Fury can preach whatever crap about ‘harvesting life-saving healing properties from my DNA’ he wants, but it doesn’t change the fact that you  _took_  me from one research lab full of crazy scientists to another!”

“I-I,” Pietro stuttered, still kneeling on the floor in front of the chair you had just leapt up from. “What are you saying? I thought we’d moved on from this? They wanted to help people, I talked to them, you know that. You said you trusted me! You told me that you trusted me after all that!”

“HOW COULD I EVER TRUST SOMEONE LIKE YOU?!” you screamed, gasping after you realised the words that had just slipped your lips. Tears pooled in your eyes as you watched Pietro’s defeated form slump. “I-I’m sorry, you know- you know I didn’t mean that,” you tried, voice heaving as sobs racked your figure.

Brushing you aside with tears of his own, he growled, “Y/N, of course you did! This was a joke to you from the beginning. You lied to me. You lied to me this whole time. You told me you trusted me- YOU TOLD ME YOU  _LOVED ME_!”

“Pietro,” you breathed, trying to grab his arm before he had already fled from the room, leaving you with his last words still echoing around your head.

_It was all a lie._

**_It’s a beautiful lie_  
** It’s the perfect denial  
Such a beautiful lie to believe in  
So beautiful, beautiful it makes me 

* * *

Two months later and you and Pietro had managed to form a terse sort of wordless relationship and nothing more.

You missed him so badly it hurt some times.

Twelve weeks from your due date, you were massive- and you were definitely certain that you had not been this big when you’d had your first. Having continued to go down to the Doctors in town instead of SHIELD’s facilities- against everyone’s better judgement (including Pietro’s because he insisted that he should still have at least some say in his child’s well-being, to which you argued, ‘And so should I!’)

In the time you had spent apart from Pietro, you still noticed all of the little habits he still had- like mumbling things over and over to himself to remember them; always making enough breakfast and coffee for two (though now he left before anyone claimed it- usually you); combing his fingers through his hair when he got nervous or stressed (which seemed to be all the time now and his silvery locks were starting to look really rather tangled); and the way he would smile to himself when he was reminded of a fond memory.

All of these things made your heart tug.

All of these things made you regret the lies.

But there had only ever been one.

You did love him, always had. But it seemed Pietro didn’t want to know if ever you tried to tell him. Seldom did you find yourself alone in any room with him and if you did, he would quickly - _and yes, quickly_ \- leave without so much as an excuse.

And it  _hurt_.

**_Oh Oh  
The end of the world_ **

* * *

##  _150 Chicken Pot Noodles stolen from local Supermarket_

* * *

One day, you found yourself sitting in a comfortable silence with Tony, Steve and Pietro in one of many lounges in front of the TV- though you were all reading various books or playing on phones. Lying on the large white leather sofa, you had your feet resting in Steve’s lap while you read your battered old copy of  _The Hobbit_ , almost dozing off to the soothing massaging he was giving the soles of your tired feet.

“Hmm,” you sighed contentedly, resting your open book on your large stomach and shuffling to lie your head back on the sofa arm. 

Steve chuckled quietly. “You sound like you could have used a foot rub for a while now.”

“You have no idea,” you mumbled, letting your eyes fall close and drifted into a semi-concious sort of doze. Your belly was covered only by the thin material of a stretchy pyjama jumpsuit made specifically for pregnant women.

By this point, you were experiencing a lot of aching in your feet and back and everything seemed to hurt. Heart burn still plagued you and constipation had become a real issue- which didn’t really make sense to you because you were visiting the toilet on a practically half-hourly basis to empty your - _squished and squashed (thanks, baby)-_  bladder.

Roused from your reverie by a small exclamation that came from Steve, you opened your eyes and frowned. “Steve, what is it?”

Pietro’s head snapped to look in your direction, concern already plastered on his face- as it generally was whenever you winced in pain at a Braxton Hick or whimpered at a leg cramp or even sniffled a little when you saw you were out of your craving food: Chicken Pot Noodles (except, the cupboards all seemed to be curiously filled to the brim with them, no matter how quickly you got through them, which occurred to you as weird but you didn’t actually much care.) But you carefully only viewed him out of the corner of your eye as you raised an eyebrow at Steve.

“I-I,” he started, a small smile spreading across his face. “I think the baby’s kicking…” he whispered, eyes transfixed on your polka-dot clad stomach.

Shuffling so that you could sit upright -somewhat- you looked down at your belly and sure enough, there was a definite movement against the material and a funny feeling against your tummy. Quick as a flash, Pietro was by your side and watching in fascination as your stomach quivered.

A breathless sort of laugh escaped his lips and you risked a glance to his eyes- you still hadn’t held a proper conversation since the  _incident_  let alone made actual eye contact. He met your gaze but the ecstatic gleam stayed in his icy blues.

In a spontaneous moment of confidence, you took his hand and placed it over the skin that seemed to bubbling against your hard stomach. He froze for a moment before he relaxed and his breath escaped in a strangled noise and he bit down on his lip as a few tears brimmed his eyes.

“Its beautiful,” Steve murmured as he watched the two of you and your belly.

Coming over to look fondly over the situation, Tony leaned against the back of the sofa and grunted in agreement.

And in that moment, shared with Pietro, you felt better than you had in all of two months.

__**Lie awake in bed at night  
** And think about your life  
Do you want to be different?  
Try to let go of the truth  
The battles of your youth  
'Cause this is just a game 

* * *

##  _‘No, Fury, keep all of your scientists away from her. She’s stressed enough as it is and if I see a single white coat near her that she isn’t completely comfortable with, you will find that half of your weapons supply has vanished before you can say ‘Quicksilver.’’_

* * *

The second time the baby kicked- properly kicked and not just the little flutters you got when you drank too much orange juice- was another two weeks later when you were watching a film with the rest of the team on the large TV in the bigger living room. 

After 30 weeks of pregnancy, you were already looking forward to be one bump less. At the little doctors in town, they had given you a cheap - _ok, it was free_ \- ultrasound scan that revealed all that you needed to. Though, you had refused to look at the pictures yourself because you couldn’t bring yourself to look again- they had shown you during your first pregnancy, while at the research industry, and there was a distinct deformation on its left side (much to the glee of Dr Rawe) that made you want to throw up for another several hours afterwards.

At least this baby was healthy, your doctor has assured you- and the doctor told you again that both heartbeats (again: yours and the baby’s, you presumed) were perfectly healthy and doing well.

Feeling like crap and not far from falling asleep on Thor’s shoulder- you were snuggled into his side, using him as a pillow, much to his fond amusement- you had just shuffled in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure on your bladder (seriously, you had to pee  _again?_!) when you felt the familiar odd sensation on your tummy.

Opening your eyes quickly, you moved to look down at your tummy, covered by a fluffy sweater which you quickly removed to look at your belly closer- easier when only one of Tony’s old  _Black Sabbath_  t-shirts covered it.

“What is it?” Pietro asked when he spotted your intense gaze on your stomach. He still wasn’t outright speaking to you, but you found that he was being less hostile and openly accommodating to your needs.

Grunting with the effort- this bump was  _definitely_ larger than you remembered- you propped yourself up on your elbows and nodded at your tummy with a tired smile, “He’s kicking again.”

In a silvery blur, Pietro shot across the room to your side and placed a tentative palm on the spot you encouraged him to. A steady grin spread across his lips and he laughed breathily as he felt the quivering kicks.

“Little Natasha’s kicking again?!” Nat cried, leaping over to you and joining Pietro where he knelt on the floor, placing her palm beside his and squealing in delight.

Pietro raised an eyebrow at the redhead. “Little Natasha?”

“Of course,” she retorted, rolling her eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he grinned- the most jovial you had seen him in a long time (and apparently the rest of the team thought the same,) “but there is no way I am naming my baby girl Natasha.”

Your breath hitched uncontrollably and he shot you a look.

“S-sorry,” you mumbled, swallowing thickly, “I just– that-that’s…’your baby girl’…” It made your heart swell when you heard him say that and - _damn, these hormones_ \- your eyes to water a little.

The mutant Avenger looked down at the floor, chewing his lip- something you recognised he did when he was shy or nervous. “Well, I meant-”

“No,” you cut him off, offering a small smile, “I like that. Our baby girl.”

Something about the way Pietro’s eyes gleamed as he considered that made your heart twinge and you lost yourself in the hope glimmering in those icy blues.

“Umm, guys?“ The momentary spell was broken when Clint cleared his throat and addressed them awkwardly. “How far can a baby’s feet stretch?”

“Not far,” Banner said matter-of-factly, fiddling with his glasses, “They generally stay in a foetal position while in the womb, only stretching out when they’re kicking. Why do you ask?”

“Because either you have a baby with  _really_ long legs or you might wanna get that checked out…” Clint replied, nodding to the other side of your stomach.

Frowning, you rolled to the side so that you could see the left side of your belly more clearly and gasped. 

“What the-?” you blurted, placing a ginger hand to where there was another clear interior movement on the opposite side of your belly.  Looking from one kick to the other, you turned your gaze back up to Bruce and asked, “What…what is that?”

“I think we should get you down to my office-” he had barely finished talking before you found yourself sat comfortably in a plush chair, facing Banner who looked just as shocked as you were at the sudden and unexpected change of scenery.

Turning to your left, you realised what had just happened when you saw Pietro sat in the seat next to you with a sheepish pink tint to the tips of his ears, though the same expression of worry was still on his face.

“So?” he encouraged, goading Dr Banner. “What is it? Is she OK? Is the baby OK?”

Still coming to terms with Quicksilver’s ability of speed- and apparently, indelicacy- Banner flustered for a moment before saying, “Well, I’ll have to take some tests. I’m sorry, Y/N, but it seems that this is necessary.”

Taking a deep and shuddering breath, you glared down at your hands and stayed silent.

__**It’s a beautiful lie  
** It’s the perfect denial  
Such a beautiful lie to believe in  
So beautiful, beautiful it makes m- 

Your eyes flew open when you felt cool and familiar hands on yours.

“Y/N,” Pietro whispered, turning your chair to face him as he crouched in front of you and looked up into your eyes. “We need to do this. To see that you and the baby are OK. It’ll be fine, we’ll be here the whole time, I promise-” he faltered for a second as though remembering something, “U-unless you-you’d prefer me to not be…” His voice trailed off and you bit down hard on your lip when he stood up, taking his hands back and returning to his seat.

Still feeling the pressure on your hands, even though their indentor had gone, you steeled yourself and fixed Banner’s eye. “Yeah. OK.”

* * *

At your request, Pietro had held your hand the entire way through the ultrasound, even letting you bury your head in his chest when you felt yourself panicking a little before Banner had sectioned off your bed from the rest of the  _-too familiar, too sciency, too lab-like_ \- science laboratory. When your bed was surrounded by a white curtain you felt a little more at ease, and it was comforting having Banner do the ultrasound.

Squirting some of the cool gel on your tummy, he took the little metal camera device - _thing?_ \- and smoothed it around your bump. It took a while for any defined picture to show up on the screen- it was some very advanced technology he was using and the 3D picture was expertly graphicated. 

But when the picture developed slowly on the moving screen, you gasped and covered your mouth with your hand.

There, on the screen was your baby.

And-  _wait, hang on._

“Is-is that…?”

Dr Banner looked to you with a cool smile and confirmed, “Yes. You’re having twins.”

Your breath left your lungs in a stutter and you shot a look to Pietro who had an awed smile on his face.

“We’re having twins,” he managed to choke out, a stray tear of joy trickling down his cheek.

Whether from overload of hormones, the close proximation, the new discovery, or  _what,_ you knew in that moment that despite anything the two of you had been through, Pietro would be by your side from here until forever.

Flicking his gaze down to your eyes, he smiled and mumbled, “I love you so much, Y/N,” before pressing his lips to yours.

_I love you, too, Pietro._

* * *

##  _Several Supermarkets in New York Area Experiencing Similar Mysterious Disappearances of Chicken Pot Noodles_

* * *

From then on, you and Pietro returned to your previous coupled relationship, arm in arm through your pregnancy. It seemed that seeing his children in that picture was the last straw for Pietro to fall to his knees and beg you to take him back (to which you told him he was an idiot for ever thinking you wanted him to leave in the first place.)

It felt  _amazing_  to be back in his arms and now you felt you knew what it was like to have a _normal_  relationship with a partner through having a child (or as normal as it would get, you didn’t care.)

Everything seemed to have worked itself out and any weight that had been previously bearing down on your shoulders was relieved under the combined strength of you  _and_ your partner.

Natasha and Pietro were still arguing about what they were going to call your babies- the unborn twins weren’t in a position to tell either of their genders but you weren’t too bothered as long as they were both healthy- and Wanda was insisting that, as legal auntie, she should be the children’s godmother.

In fairness, it seemed that everyone was pleased about you and Pietro making up and now the Avengers Tower was almost stress-free and everyone was looking forward to two extra little agents.

At the moment, you were sat in a deep arm chair with an ice lolly in your hand- it was a hot day, no judgement- while chuckling at the Avengers trying to construct a flat-pack table for the nursery.

“No! Screw K goes into Hole 6!” Tony snapped, snatching the screwdriver from Steve and wrestling Clint for the table leg. “I’m the most experienced engineer here! An IKEA children’s table isn’t going to be much work.”

“Whatever you say,” Clint relented, throwing his hands up in an amused defeat.

“How about you just let me construct the table, Stark?” Wanda asked, raising an eyebrow at the ‘experienced engineer’ from where she was fitting a lampshade to the ceiling using her abilities. “I am the most experienced when it comes to telekinetics.”

“This is different,” Tony argued, frowning deeply as he pored over two slightly different screws, “This is totally different.”

“Whatever you say,” Wanda mimicked with a knowing eye roll.

Pietro, who was painting the walls yellow at a million miles an hour, paused to dash off somewhere and return before the paintbrush could hit the floor. When you looked down, you saw that there was a fresh pot of Chicken Pot Noodle at your side and smiled fondly before tucking in.

Clint and Steve had moved on to get the cradles set up, while Natasha and Thor were decorating the walls Pietro had painted, with stickers of butterflies and rockets. Bruce was sticking stars on the ceiling- perched precariously on a step ladder- in complex but incredibly accurate constellations, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration.

You smiled to yourself.

Your children were going to have the best family imaginable. 

The busy work continued for another hour before Tony stood up sharply and stormed out, muttering something about ‘stupid IKEA tables’ and ‘I’ll show you a real table’. Returning half an hour later lugging a large modern looking table that he proudly shoved next to the discarded box of the flat-pack accusee and announced, “Ta-da!” before setting to work covering it in colourful materials.

* * *

At 38 weeks, you were just about ready to pop and were getting more and more emotional. Despite that, though, all of the Avengers were just as nice to you and constantly fetched you Chicken Pot Noodles, rubbed your feet and let you watch whatever you wanted on the TV.

Tony had designed the entire nursery and installed all manner of advanced freaky technology for the children- including their own JARVIS voice that acted like a baby monitor.

Steve, Natasha and Wanda had gone out and bought an entire wardrobe for the two babies and stocked it all up in a walk-in wardrobe donated by Pepper as soon as she’d heard the news.

Clint and Thor had argued with Coulson until he’d agreed that you would be allowed maternal leave along with Pietro for as long as need be and that the entire floors of the Avengers Tower occupied by any of them would be out of bounds to other agents of SHIELD.

And Pietro? He had driven himself hilariously mad with organising and fetching everything a baby could possibly need and now the Avengers Tower remarkably resembled one giant nursery. Everything had been baby-proofed (and Clint especially was moaning constantly about not even being able to open the fridge); when you opened any cupboard or closet, there was usually at least one diaper, extra blanket or packet of baby wipes falling out of it; all of the tiled floors had been covered in baby mats; everything had been cleaned top to bottom.

Seeing Pietro  _dad_  out like this was endearing and it made you want to tear up again.

* * *

##  _CCTV Examined in Search for Chicken Pot Noodle Thief- ‘There was nothing on the tape, just a silver blur’_

* * *

At 40 weeks, you lay, exhausted, on the sofa in one of the lounges. Your head resting in Pietro’s lap while he gave you a head massage and mumbled quietly to himself, in Sokovian, about things he needed to pick up from the supermarket- or so you assumed, it didn’t really matter because it was lulling you to sleep.

Then-

“ _Ooh_!” you grunted, cradling your stomach and spitting out curses, while the rest of the Avengers just looked up from what they were doing in mild curiosity. The babies had been extra fidgety for a while, throwing punches like they knew what they were doing, and sometimes it felt like they were having some sibling squabble inside of you, but recently it had been getting less and less.

Banner had assured you it was normal because by this point there was little room for them to move around, and instead of paying attention to how hard they can kick, to look out for how often they move.

You’d been getting irregular Braxton Hicks a lot lately and were used to how they felt- a mildly uncomfortable clenching of your lower abdomen.

Except this time was stronger and different.

Getting your breath back, not even realising you’d held it, you sat up and leaned against Pietro, who had turned to hold you and was rubbing your lower belly with his hands soothingly.

“ _Este in regula, este in regula_ ,” he murmured, stroking your hair and planting kisses on your neck, forgetting to switch back to English- though it didn’t matter because you already knew he was comforting you, whatever language it was in.

After a few long moments, you settled back into his arms with a tired, “Just another Braxton Hick.”

By now the sky was darkening and a quick look at the clock numbers glowing red on the TV told you that it was approaching ten.

It was a nice night, the windows were open letting in some cool air and everyone was chatting quietly while a film played on the TV.

_Gods, you had to pee._

Coming back from the toilet and snuggling back up to Pietro under the fleecy blanket, you noted that that had been the eleventh time in the space of two hours.

“Urgh,” you grumbled, feeling another Braxton Hick on its way. It felt stronger than the last one, which was weird, so you stood up to try and relieve it- because movement usually helped- but nothing happened and it just carried on. Groaning again, you put your hands on your knees and breathed your way through it, counting twenty seconds before it gradually eased away again.

“Y/N,” Pietro said slowly, coming up behind you and resting a hand on your lower back, gently rubbing circles. “Are you OK? That looked stronger than the last ones.”

Shaking your head, you collapsed back down onto the sofa and told him, “I’m fine, it was probably just indigestion or heart burn again.”

He didn’t look convinced and neither did any of the others.

Another twenty minutes passed before you felt another one coming and stood up to cope with it. “Hng!” you whined, cradling your belly with one hand and leaning against the sofa with the other. It felt as though it was stronger than the last one and the way this one progressed from your lower back to your abdomen made you realise what it was straight away.

It may have been a while since your first baby, but you still knew what a real contraction felt like and then-

“ _Shit_ ,” you hissed under your breath and a second later felt Pietro’s arms around you. A small splash sounded and everyone looked down to the little puddle on the floor between your legs.

“I thought you just went to the toilet…?” Pietro asked quietly in your ear.

Shaking your head, you corrected him, “That’s not pee. My waters just broke.”

Everybody in the room froze.

 ** _Everyone’s looking at me_  
** I’m running around in circles, baby  
A quiet desperation’s building higher  
I’ve got to remember this is just a game 

“I-is this it?” he asked, suddenly nervous as he held you in his arms, “Is this the real thing?”

“Yes!” you told him, “This is very much the real thing.”

“Oh, oh, umm, what do I do? Do I take you down to Banner’s lab” he asked, talking quicker than he could run.

At this point, Banner perked up and said, “Well, seeing as her waters have broken we should probably check her but there’s no need for her to leave until the contractions are more regular- which, err, shouldn’t be too long since this is your second.”

Bracing yourself, you felt the familiar disconcerting rush of air before you opened your eyes to find yourself sitting, once again, in Banner’s office where he had set up a private maternity ward just for you.

Dr Banner had to take a moment before he inhaled deeply and shot a quick scowl at Pietro, before leading you over to the bed for you to lie down.

One short check-up later and you were told that everything was going normally- dilation was progressing as it should, etc.- and to come back down when the contractions got regular.

* * *

“Aargh!” you growled, squeezing Pietro and Thor’s hands to the point where they were both nearly on the floor  _squeaking_  in pain. You were lying in the hospital bed with Thor and Pietro holding your hands and soothing you, Banner down between your legs informing you every so often that you were  _so-many_ cm dilated. Tony and Clint kept bringing you pots of ice chips before disappearing again quickly, averting their eyes the entire time. Steve and Natasha were helping Bruce with medical equipment- after you refused to have anyone you didn’t know in the room with you; and Wanda was singing comfortingly to you in Sokovian (and/or Romanian, you couldn’t remember what Pietro had told you about his language– hell, by this point she might as well have been singing in Chinese for all you knew.)

The contractions had got to the point where they were almost constant now and it was a real effort to just not scream out. But one of the main things you remembered from your last pregnancy was the small piece of advice Dr Rawe had given you- yes, he was a terrible human-being but he knew what he was doing anyway- which was to just grit your teeth and not waste energy or breath on screaming. Following that helped you and now you just grunted and threw your head back into the pillow.

“ _Este in regula, este in regula_ ,” Pietro mumbled, stroking your hair an planting kisses on your temple as you tried to even out your breathing. “ _Puteți face acest lucru, eu cred în tine, doar strângeți mâna mea._ ” Losing yourself in his deep timbre and heavily accented words, you swallowed and managed to take one deep breath at a time while you focussed on his voice. “ _Inspirați…și în afară. Inspirați…și în afară. Doar așa, haide, e bine, puteți face acest lucru_.”

From the few lessons in his native tongue he had given you, you knew enough to understand that he was telling you to breathe in…and out…in…and out…in-

“ _Shit_!” you cried as you felt a contraction so bad it felt as though your legs were going to throw up. 

“That’s it!” Banner told you. “You’re fully dilated, you can start pushing now.”

Exhaling deeply and groaning, you sucked in one large breath and put your chin and chest, eyes screwed shut and  _pushed_.

“Keep going!”

“You can do this, Y/N.”

“Just a few more pushes!”

“ _Shut up_!” you snarled, still with your eyes tightly shut and your hands held tightly by Thor and Pietro- who were still whimpering a little as you squeezed them harder.

You’d been offered pain killers plenty of times by Dr Banner but had turned them down saying that you didn’t have any last time and you wouldn’t have any this time. Your healing powers offered all the relief you needed- not much but it was enough and you would survive.

There was a sudden small jerk and Banner exclaimed, “There’s the head!”

Relaxing for a moment, you took a breather while Natasha excitedly went to see. “That doesn’t look normal,” she stated. “Are those… horns?”

Banner shot her a dark look and -not delicately- told her to shut up before turning back to you and saying, “Everything’s fine, keep pushing and the sooner they’re out, the sooner you get to rest. Come on, you can do this, just another few pushes.”

Dutifully, you braced yourself up again and concentrated on pushing your abdominal muscles. 

After another long few minutes, there was a moment of silence as you slumped back down before an infant cry sounded through the room and everyone heaved a joyous sigh of relief.

Banner wrapped the baby up in a small blanket and handed it to you, whispering, “It’s a girl.”

Just that made your heart swell and tears pooled in your eyes.

_It was a girl._

_And you had her in your arms._

Sobbing quietly as you watched the baby in your arms, you stroked her forehead and used your powers to send her into a sleep to settle her while you gave birth to her twin sibling. 

Handing her to Pietro, he almost fell to his knees as he looked down at his  _baby girl_. His breath left him in a rush and he tried not to cry as he bit down hard on his lip and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Returning your attention to the second baby, you gripped the sides of the mattress in your fists- Thor was looking a little pained now and Pietro was busy coddling your daughter- and  _pushed pushed **pushed**_.

Another _long_  few minutes later and Banner declared, “It’s a boy!” before handing you another blanket-wrapped baby to exhausted your arms.

They were beautiful, both of them. 

 ** _So beautiful, beautiful_  
** It’s a beautiful lie  
So beautiful, beautiful  
It’s a beautiful lie  
So beautiful, beautiful… 

So beautiful and yours and they would never be taken from you,  _ever_ , because you had a Pietro- who would quite literally race to the ends of the Earth for you and your children- and a team of defensive Avengers who would take on whatever threatened your babies.

Sharing a thoroughly knackered look with Pietro, the two of you cradling your babies in your arms, you knew then that he had  _always_  been by your side.

“Marry me,” he whispered, leaning down and pecking your lips, “Marry me, Y/F/N.”

When he leaned back, there were even more tears brimming both your eyes as you told him breathlessly, 

“ _Yes_.”

* * *

“Natasha.”

“No.”

“Nat?”

“ _No.”_

“Oh, come on,” Natasha pouted, tossing the magazine of baby names aside and lifting your daughter from the baby mat she was lying on to cuddle her and continue, “She looks like a Natasha. You know she’d be a badass if she was called Natasha.”

“We’re not calling her Natasha,” Pietro said firmly, for what felt like the twentieth time.

Stroking one of your daughter’s black stubs- Banner had told you that, yes, the two pointed stubs on either side of her hair line would develop to horns (which you actually thought was pretty cool)- Natasha grumbled something about racism towards Russian names.

You still hadn’t been able to decide on names for either of your children. The son, who you had in your arms where you sat in between Pietro’s legs on the sofa, had two small black feathered wings protruding from his shoulder blades while your daughter also had a long black tail with an arrowed head and a dark purple skin colour. Adoring them both, you did have to awkwardly explain to Pietro that physical mutation actually did run in your family- to which his reaction was amused and he told you that he thought your children’s mutations were badass and they would grow up looking  _awesome_ (and also offering a sheepish, 'You know, twins kinda run in my family...')

“Castiel,” you said suddenly, twisting to see Pietro’s face as you repeated it, “Castiel.”

He raised an eyebrow but mulled it over and looked down at your baby. “A Biblical name does seem appropriate for a child with wings,” he chuckled, but then nodded and said, “Yeah. I like Castiel. Cas.”

With a grin, you nodded, turning back to look at your baby boy, kissing his forehead and murmuring, “ _Castiel_.”

“And what about ‘ _Little Natasha’_ over there?” Pietro chuckled, nodding towards where the redhead still rocked your daughter in her arms, pecking kisses all over her chubby little purple hands and feet.

Tony chimed in, as he wandered in from the kitchen to the lounge with a glistening bottle of beer, “How about Violet? It’s appropriate.”

“That was my Nana’s name,” you smiled, gazing up at your daughter. “But, no. That’s like calling a black child ‘Chocolate’.”

Steve laughed before suggesting, “What about Amelia? That was the name of that mutant rights activist.”

“Or Kitana?”

“I still think Natasha is the name you’re looking for.”

“Brodi?”

“Scarlet?”

“Now that’s like calling a black baby ‘Vanilla’.”

“Natasha…?”

“How about ‘Sylvia’?”

“I’m naming a baby, not my grandmother.”

“Natasha?”

“Dantea?” one of the cleaners offered, before returning to her mopping of the floor. “Enduring, everlasting.”

You and Pietro sat stunned for a moment at the cleaner’s suggestion and shared a look before looking back up to your daughter and nodding. “Dantea, I like it, it has a badass kind of ring to it.”

“And these two _have_ helped us endure everything, including ourselves,” Pietro smiled, capturing your lips in a chaste kiss. “Dantea and Castiel.”

“Two unusual yet beautiful names for two unusual yet beautiful children,” Thor proclaimed, adopting a merry smile. “How fitting.”

__**It’s a beautiful lie  
** It’s the perfect denial  
Such a beautiful lie to believe in  
So beautiful, beautiful it makes me  

* * *

##  _Mystery Silver Blur Taken to Stealing Diapers and Baby Supplies from New York Supermarkets- What Madman is This?_

* * *

“I tell you what, its handy having a husband who can run at a million miles an hour when you have two young mutants for children,” you sighed, wiping your brow as you try to get Castiel to eat some more carrots.

The husband in question was currently chasing down Dantea- who had learned to walk in less than six months and was now speeding (and, yes,  _speeding_  because the universe worked cruelly and she adopted Pietro’s power and now you had a screaming infant racing around the Avengers Tower unless her daddy was with her) about everywhere. 

You’d worked out pretty quickly that Dantea was going to be a daddy’s girl, but seeing her nestled in Pietro’s arms, when he read her his childhood stories in native tongue at night when she was in bed, was positively endearing and you wouldn’t change it for the world. Dantea, now approaching 6, had long, curled black horns; a longer tail and raven black hair that reached her waist.

Natasha had got into the habit of nicknaming her Nat, and after much complaining, you had finally relented and now often called her it as well.

Castiel had been trying to spread his wings since he was three months and you remembered several particularly heart stopping moments when he’d manage to flutter his wings hard enough to carry himself out of his cradle. Lucky, Pietro was fast enough to dive forwards and catch him with a relieved breath before he hit the floor. At almost the same time Dantea learned to run, Castiel learned to fly and now, the pair of them often had fun racing each other.

Tony had made some adjustments to the nursery since their birth and now it was over three stories high, the floor was completely cushioned (for Castiel) and there were climbing and park equipment fitted into one half while their beds were in the other.

After Steve- Castiel’s favourite uncle- introduced the former to his friend, Sam Wilson, the two had become firm friends and you often took him over to Sam so that the two could fly together.

When Dantea had first started questioning her purple skin colour, it had been Bruce who had stepped forward first, explaining his own other half. Everyone had told Dantea how beautiful she was but it was Banner who had really helped her to love herself. One day Banner had lost control of himself and the Hulk would have destroyed the entire Avengers Tower if it hadn’t been for Dantea running forwards and leaping onto him, wrapping her arms in a hug around his neck.

Pietro and you had stood there, frozen. Petrified.

Until slowly, the Hulk had tentatively placed two monster arms-  _very_ gently- around the tiny form and hugged her back, eyes drooped, carefully putting her back on her feet only to change back into his own form where there was direct access to clothes.

Clint had taken the pair of them out with Thor, when you and Pietro went on your honeymoon, and taught them how to shoot a bow and arrow while Thor taught them about the legends of his own world.

Castiel, who often stayed in his sister’s shadow- because Dantea was the louder and more confident of the two-, gets on the best with his aunt, Wanda, who has helped bring him out of his shell. And in turn, when she gets stressed, he trots (or flies) up to her, places a pair of tiny hands gingerly on hers and smiles up at her. And she couldn’t help but calm when she saw that face.

The twins adored each other and couldn’t be separated. Appreciating and celebrating each other’s mutations, even opting to help train with the other Avengers on occasion (the occasion being when Fury let them be in the training room.)

Everyone loved them and Coulson would refer to them fondly as the smallest agents he has ever seen at SHIELD.

All in all, you were happy with everything that had happened to you in your life, because all of it brought you here.

With the Avengers, your husband, Pietro, and your children, Dantea and Castiel.

**_So beautiful, beautiful it makes me_ **


End file.
